Absences
by NevynR
Summary: With Josh away again, Beckett comes to the realization that she needs to get a few things straight in her own head. Set post-To Love and Die in L.A, pre Knockout, spoilers for 'Nikki Heat' & 'Countdown' and maybe some others.


**Title: Absences**

**Summary: With Josh away again, ****Beckett comes to the realization that she needs to get a few things straight in her own head. Set post-To Love and Die in L.A, pre Knockout, spoilers for 'Nikki Heat' & 'Countdown' and maybe some others.**

**Rating: T**

**Disclaimer: The usual. Sadly.**

**Author's Note: Ok, this one goes out to Manuxinhace. It's all your fault. :-P This one was supposed to be a short one-shot, and it just kept on growing. As always, folks, feed those nice reviews to the plot bunnies, please!**

**NevynR**

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><p>Tired and frustrated, Kate rolled over in bed for what seemed like the tenth time. Realizing that sleep probably wasn't going to happen for a while, she looked at the clock.<p>

_Damn_, she thought. _Not even two o'clock yet._ About to try reciting as many boring legal precedents as possible in an attempt to bore herself to sleep, her musings were cut short as her cell phone chimed an incoming text. Wondering who would bother texting her at this hour, she reached over for the phone on the bedside table.

_Well, it can't be a murder, _she thought. _They get called in, not texted... _ She smiled slightly as she noted the sender ID: Castle.

***Hey... you awake?*** Quickly tapping out a response, she lay back, feeling a bit less frustrated.

***Yeah, actually, what's up?***_ Of course it would have to be him_, she thought, _the only person I know of who keeps less regular hours than me..._

***Whew! Didn't want to wake you guys by calling this late. I needed somebody to bounce a couple if ideas off, if you're up for it.* **Touched by the way he seemed to have taken Josh into consideration as well, Beckett smiled. A teasing smirk crept across her lips as she lay in her bed, face lit by the glow of her phone screen, replying.

***Josh is away for another week, I was trying and failing to get to sleep. You have me all to yourself for the evening ;-) Call if you want.***

Barely thirty seconds later, her phone started to play his ringtone. Not surprised by his rapid response, she answered.

"Hey Castle... what's up?" Trying to keep his mind on why he called in the first place, Castle had a hard time dragging his thoughts away from the gorgeous detective in bed on the other end of the call.

"Hey, Beckett. I was writing, and hit a block... Nikki is being difficult, and I was hoping I could bounce some ideas off you, if you're up for it." Now wide awake, Kate couldn't help letting a little bit of the excitement she felt creep into her voice.

"Of course... bounce away!" Not caring that they would both be tired in the morning, the minutes slipped past them both, turning unnoticed into hours...

Beckett stifled a yawn as she stretched at her desk. Opening her eyes, she saw a cup of coffee being placed in front of her. Glancing up at her partner as he flopped wearily into his own chair, she smiled tiredly.

"Thanks, Castle." She took a long sip, humming appreciatively as the drink worked it's way down, filling her with warmth and allowing her day to actually start properly.

"Any time, Beckett. Besides, it's my fault for keeping you up so late last night."

"It's ok, I had a lot of fun, actually... The coffee is still good though." Kate went silent for a few moments, her thoughts whirling. A slight smile creasing the corners of her mouth, she privately wondered if it was really just the coffee that made her smile of a morning. She'd been annoyed when Nathalie Rhodes had stolen it months ago. No, she'd been upset, angry, furious even, not annoyed. _How dare she steal my coffee_! Beckett thought, a trace of a frown appearing as she recalled the incident. Yet again, Kate had trouble separating how she felt about her coffee from... the man who brought it in for her, every day. Was it just the coffee she enjoyed (she'd never had better, honestly), or the fact that _he_ brought it to her, always? She had needed coffee first thing in the mornings as long as she'd held a badge, but when she really thought about it, it had been a necessity, something to wake her up and help her focus. Now, it was a luxury, every day... A treat she looked forward to, and on the very rare occasion it didn't happen, she missed it. She always grabbed a cup when she got back to the precinct (from the machine _he_ bought, incidentally), but it was never quite the same...

No, she was beginning to suspect that it was the combination of delicious caffeine and her partner that brought the happy little smile to her lips every morning. The same partner with whom she had spent close to two hours on the phone with last night in bed. The same partner who she had called at three am the week before, when she woke from another nightmare about the freezer, just to make sure he was still alive.

Crap.

Mentally stepping back, she could see her relationship with Castle with a little bit of perspective. As much as she had tried to move on after that horrible summer, as much as she thought she had pieced her broken heart back together and moved forward, as much as she should be happy with her gorgeous surgeon boyfriend, she knew she wasn't. And it was all _his _fault, whether he knew it or not.

Pushing her nerves to the back of her mind, she finished her coffee and glanced over to her partner, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. A hint of a smile graced her lips for a brief second, before she wiped it away with a determined thought. She stood up, immediately attracting his attention. Seeing his puzzled look, she walked out from behind her desk, saying,

"Come on, Castle, let's go." Standing, he looked even more puzzled than before.

"Um, ok... Where?" Taking particular care with her words, Kate deliberately avoided saying 'we need to talk', knowing those words would immediately strike the wrong chord with any man.

"Follow me, ok? There are some things I need to discuss with you, and I'd rather not have an audience." Thankfully, both Ryan and Esposito were dealing with paperwork, and hadn't heard them. Leading him into one of the observation rooms, Beckett waited until he entered the room, and closed the door. Locking it, she turned back to him and took a big breath. Letting it out slowly, she looked at him, assessing, searching, probing his face for a reaction. Seeing nothing but confusion, she spoke.

"Ok, there are a couple of things I needed to speak to you about, Castle, but first, I need you to promise me you will hear me out, listen to _everything_ I have to say before you respond okay? Please?" Confused as hell, Castle was more than a little bit curious, but her 'please' held an edge of desperation, and something else he couldn't quite place.

"I promise." He said, trying to keep his tone even, although he was sure she could hear the hammering of his heart from where she stood. Her head down, Beckett slowly raised her face to look him in the eyes.

"I need you to step back for a little while, Richard." Her deliberate use of his given name wrenching his mind back from frantically trying to decipher her intent, he couldn't keep the shock from his face. Seeing the effect of her words, Kate continued, somewhat hurriedly. "I don't want you to stop being my partner, but I need a little bit of space from... us. From everything not work-related." Searching his eyes, she saw the flash of pain in his gaze, quickly repressed as he took a shuddering breath. Before he had a chance to open his mouth, she cut him off again. "It's not what you think, Rick. Please... just hear me out." She paused, seeing the hurt look fade slowly from his features. She took another steadying breath. "When you... left... for the summer, I went through a really rough time. While you were away, I met Josh, and things seemed to be going okay, but then you came back. I can't... I need to..." She paused for a second, searching for the words. "When you came back, even after what happened, things were... better. I need to know how much of me, how much of Josh and I is because you are still here... I know I didn't exactly word that very well, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that when you referred to me as your 'work wife', you were probably closer than you realized. We spend so much time with each other during the day, and out of ours as well, chasing down leads, and even downtime. Josh is away a lot, and with his schedule and mine, it doesn't leave a lot of room for together-time. He... I..." She sighed again, looking at the floor, before gazing directly into his eyes and continuing. "I need you to stop being there for me, just for a week, until he comes back, so that I know how much of Josh and I is just him and I not working, and how much of it is me lying to myself about how much I rely on you." Searching his face for clues as to what he was thinking, Beckett saw shock and worry on his face for a second or two, before his expression settled into one of careful patience.

"Of course, Beckett. If that's what you need, I can do it..." The look of relief that swept across her face drew a small chuckle from Castle. Impulsively, Beckett drew him into a brief hug, very much aware that she had just crossed the line she had so carefully drawn only moments ago. Enfolded by his arms, she murmured into his chest.

"Thankyou, Rick. I know this has to be hard on you, I just need you to know how much I appreciate it." She pulled back slightly, looking him in the face once more. "I'm serious though... Not even my coffee and bear-claw. I need to do this. We can get through a week, right?" He nodded.

"We can do this." He hugged her close once more, savoring the contact before letting her go. They both flashed each other a small, tight smile and walked out of the observation room, a determined look on their faces.

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><p>The rest of the week was hard for Castle, all the little things he did for Beckett had become so ingrained into him that he had to remind himself constantly to not open the door for her, to not invade her personal space when bouncing theories off each other at the murder board. The bear-claw caused him more than a bit of pain, because he had a pretty fair idea that left to her own devices, Beckett would forgo breakfast most mornings, and it almost caused him physical pain to watch her force herself to ignore her hunger pangs. Probably the hardest thing for him was the coffee. He knew she wanted her morning fix, and he knew that she not only appreciated the coffee he brought her every morning, he also knew that for Kate Beckett as much as himself, it was part of their own little ritual, assuring each other that they were still okay, that he was there, and that she still wanted him there next to her. For them, the simple exchange of a heated caffeinated beverage had come to mean so much more, a physical reaffirmation of the <em>always<em> that they shared.

For Beckett, things were a whole lot worse. Sure, Castle was there in his chair every morning, and right by her side as they did their job (well, her job anyway). He carefully kept an appropriate distance, and she felt it almost like a physical blow every time he stopped just outside her personal bubble. When she turned to look at him as they sat on the desk in front of the murder board, she blinked as the distance between them caught her by surprise every time. Their banter was still there, but none of the flirting, none of the teasing innuendo that spiced things along. It worked, though. She could work with him and not _with_ him, it just didn't feel... right. Like a missing tooth, his absence was a constant source of irritation for her, a nagging, gaping hole in her life where he had been for so long that now he wasn't _there_, she was off balance. Her rock, the tower of strength that he had been the last few years had shifted, and it felt _weird_. Strange and weird and lonely.

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><p>The days passed, and it didn't get any better for her. In fact, they got worse.<p>

Woken in the dark of the night by her nightmares, she huddled in her bed, cold and empty and alone, and she cried. The darkness seemed to steal what little heat there was in the air, and far from wrapping her in it's comforting embrace, it seemed to mock her in her solitude. Tears running freely down her cheeks, her sobs echoing in the empty apartment, Kate Beckett wondered exactly when she had gone from being the tough, independent kick-ass detective to the wreck she was now: cold and frightened and alone. For some reason, the though of being alone scared her more than any of the rest of it. No, she realised as her breathing slowed down, she was the same person she had always been, but now that she had let her guard down, now that she had let somebody in, she knew what being alone truly meant.

Before, she hadn't been alone since her mother's murder took both her parents away, and she had had to deal with it by herself. She had walled herself away, shut the world out and convinced herself she was better off by herself. Somehow, _he_ had wormed his way past her defences so completely that she hadn't even realised he was inside until she made him leave. She knew that now, that she had walled herself away so effectively that she had cut herself off from a chance at actually being happy last summer. If she hadn't been so determined not to let him in, not to let him get to her, she'd have seen his offer for what it was: an honest attempt by a friend to help somebody he cared about deeply. He'd have been as good as his word, she knew. No funny business, he'd said, and she knew that if she had taken him up on the offer, he'd have been a perfect gentleman the whole time, unless she had thrown caution to the winds and let him love her. She'd run from him, run from her own fear of _feeling_ that she'd barely even hesitated when Demming had come along. He was a nice enough guy, but the main reason she had gone out with him so easily was that she needed somewhere to hide from Castle. Knowing how he felt, and beginning to realise just how much she felt in return, she let go of the hurt, the bitterness she felt for him running away for the whole summer. She had driven him away, and although she had ended it with Demming, she hadn't done it in time He'd seen them together, and looking back, she could see exactly how it had looked to Castle - like she was happy with her new cop boyfriend, and trying hard to let her annoying tag-along down gently. Looking at it in that light, Kate couldn't blame her partner for staying away, he was obviously trying to forget _her_, trying to move on. So he reached out for something he knew: his ex wife. She couldn't fault him, not really, although she still felt a searing stab of jealousy when she thought of Gina slipping her arm through Rick's, before taking him away from her.

Laying there, tears drying on her face, Kate's mind wandered to her boyfriend. On paper, they were perfect. Unfortunately, the real world wasn't quite that forgiving. She was focused on her work, as was he. She kept getting called to lock up murderers, and he... well... aside from doing his job, he'd barely hesitate when one of his colleagues needed somebody to cover and extra shift, and the thought of spending weeks or months in some foreign country, away from the woman he professed to love didn't seem to bother him too much either. Oh, he was attentive when he returned, for a couple of day there would be flowers and dinner reservations and passion, but something was... missing. She realised that even when Josh was back, he was never truly _there_, always mentally elsewhere, and she couldn't commit to an absence, to somebody not willing to be there for her. Unlike somebody else, for whom 'always' meant exactly that. Somebody whom she knew would drop everything if she needed it, and who, for the last week, had wrestled his own feelings into submission just to give her the space that she needed to clear her own head, even though watching her suffer must be one of the worst tortures he could imagine. He'd been jealous of Demming, and rightly so. With Josh, he'd hidden his dislike as much as possible, in fact, he was about as subtle about it as the rest of the gang. Josh actually thought that they didn't mind him, and that they'd warm up to him, given the time. He didn't know them well enough to see behind the facade, that Ryan and Esposito hadn't given him the same 'big brother' talk they had given Castle because the knew in some quiet part of their minds that she didn't care about him the same way she did for her partner, that only somebody she cared deeply about had the power to hurt her badly enough to need them to step in and make sure he understood how much they cared for her. For some reason, Josh still seemed to think that Lanie liked him too. Kate knew, however, that Lanie could barely stand the man. Shaking her head, she wondered why it had taken her so long to realise that she'd screwed up this badly. She had been better at lying to herself by far than she had been at lying to her friends. They knew she didn't love Josh, and never would. They knew that Castle loved her, and they all thought that he was the only one with whom she could truly be herself, happy and whole for the first time since they had met her. Finally, Kate realised the decision her subconscious had made some time ago was the right one.

_Tomorrow_, she thought. _Josh comes back tomorrow night._

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><p>A bounce in her step, Beckett left the elevator, a tray with two coffees in it in one hand, a paper bag in the other. She made her way to her desk and smiled as she saw that Castle was already in his chair. Engrossed in his phone, he didn't notice her until she reached around from behind him, placing his coffee on the desk in front of him. Startled, he turned and looked at her, his face lighting up as he grinned hugely.<p>

"Beckett! Hey!"

"Morning Castle..." She returned his grin as she stood next to him, placing the bag next to his coffee.

"What's this, detective?" he asked, opening the bag and peering inside.

"A peace offering..." She replied cryptically. Withdrawing his hand, Castle didn't hesitate to take a bite of the custard Danish he found within. Finishing his mouthful, he put the bag down, took a sip of his coffee and replied.

"With an offering like that, Beckett, you could have stopped world war two in it's tracks..." Looking at her more closely, Castle could see the tension of the last week had entirely gone. She looked... relaxed. _Much _more relaxed, actually. Realising that the week that she had requested had gone by, and that Josh would have come home some time last night, his heart sank. Still a little concerned for her, he asked "Are you really okay, Beckett?"

She smiled at him, a full-on honest-to-goodness happy smile. She gave a quick glance around the bull-pen, and noted the absence of Ryan and Esposito. Satisfied, she stepped closer to him, their knees touching. Leaning down so their faces were only inches apart, she whispered to him.

"I'm fine, Rick. But if you want to ask me more questions about it, you'll have to take me to dinner to find out." She closed the distance between them before his brain had had a chance to process what she'd just said. Pressing a her lips briefly to his, Kate quickly drew his bottom lip between her teeth and gave it a gentle nip before releasing him and quickly moving to her own chair before she risked her losing her composure. Knowing exactly how badly his kisses could make her lose her concentration, she sat down and threw him a knowing smirk.

Unlike the last week, the rest of the day seemed to fly past for them as they both looked forward to dinner, and whatever the rest of the night would bring.


End file.
